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Is there any truth to the claim the a dry towel can actually speed up the drying process?

There are numerous different sources that I've heard claim this, here is one on voices.yahoo

A few months back when I was in a hurry to dry a load of jeans I had forgotten the night before, my friend shared a trick that would help dry the clothes faster. She said to add a dry absorbent bath towel to the load of wet clothes in the dryer. Adding the dry towel to the load of clothes cut several minutes off the usual drying time, and now I add a dry towel each and every time I dry a load of clothes. I have one towel that I use exclusively for this purpose, and it's a very soft and very absorbent full-size bath towel. The dry towel helps absorb the moisture, and as a result it seems to disperse and evaporate faster.

You can again see the claim mirrored in Tipnut,

If you’re in a rush for a load of laundry to dry–try tossing a clean, thick cotton towel in the dryer with the wet clothes. The towel will absorb some of the moisture and clothes will dry faster. If it’s a large load of laundry, throw in two or three towels.

eHow also repeats the claim.

Here's an energy-saving laundry tip for you: Placing a dry towel in the clothes dryer with a load of wet laundry reduces drying time, cutting down on energy usage and utility bills. The idea is that by adding a dry and absorbent material, some of the moisture from the wet fabrics is wicked away by the dry towel. This reduces the moisture inside the dryer, allowing each item to dry out more quickly. Experiment at home to see how much you can reduce the drying time in your dryer with this method.

To me, it seems counter-intuitive on both the science, and the likelyhood of oversight. I imagine if a dry-towel was an energy efficient drying mechanism (lowered dry time) then dryer manufacturers would be building fabric into the agitators and compartments. Further, while I can understand the wet towel absorbing moisture, it seems unlikely that getting that moisture out of more mass would be quicker. Unless we're just just re-defining a completed dry load as simply "nominally wet with less concentration."

Martin
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Evan Carroll
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  • Future commenters and answer posters: This attracted a lot of (since deleted) comments with theoretical answers (yes and no) and statements that it could not be answered empirically. It attracted a lot of (since deleted) answers (yes and no) based on theory and anecdote. It has finally garnered an answer based on empirical evidence. – Oddthinking Jul 14 '22 at 16:17
  • I don't have sufficient reputation for such a small edit, but "counterintuitive" and "redefining" are both usually written as a single word, "likelihood" has an _i_ in the second syllable, and "dry towel" should be unhyphenated (just as "wet towel" and "dry load" are correctly written without a hyphen later in the same paragraph). – phoog Jul 16 '22 at 07:56
  • Incorrect assumption: "it seems unlikely that getting that moisture out of more mass would be quicker." It's the mass of the water that matters, not of the fabric. Distributing the same amount of moisture in a larger mass of fabric increases the surface area from which water can evaporate, allowing more efficient removal of the same mass moisture. "Unless we're redefining...": It's also possible that the dry towel reduces the total mass of water that needs to be removed by the dryer, if it contains less trace moisture than the threshold at which it begins to seem damp. – phoog Jul 16 '22 at 08:13

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The Good Housekeeping Institute says that they tested adding a dry towel:

the Good Housekeeping Institute gave the tea towel in the tumble dryer tip a go, they found that drying time was reduced by half an hour

they add that "reduced by half an hour" was less beneficial than the "a third faster" claimed by Shannon Lush on Sunrise on Sunday

DavePhD
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  • But a tea towel is a lot smaller than a bath towel, so what's their point? – Ray Butterworth Jul 13 '22 at 16:23
  • @RayButterworth Shannon Lush said "stick a dry tea towel in with your wash and your wash will dry a third faster" and Good Housekeeping Institute tested Lush's claim. – DavePhD Jul 13 '22 at 16:27
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    Comparing absolutes with relatives seems to be very common among modern journalism. It produces sensationalism without revealing any actual facts. ¶ If a half hour is less than a third, then their dryer must normally run for significantly more than an hour and a half. Isn't that an excessively long time? – Ray Butterworth Jul 13 '22 at 16:41
  • @RayButterworth I think 1.5 hours is long for drying. My wife likes to put the dryer on the low heat setting, so sometimes it's that long. I don't think most people dry for that long, especially at the laundromat. – DavePhD Jul 13 '22 at 16:47
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    Modern heat pump driers are incredibly energy efficient but they are _slow_. A 5kg load in my dryer takes 2.5 hours on a good day. – Mark Henderson Jul 14 '22 at 21:11
  • @MarkHenderson I have had such a dryer for about 9 months. I usually have to hang the stuff after it's "done," but only for an hour or two. This experience underscores that "dry" is relative (surely every piece of fabric has _some_ degree of trace moisture in it, so the real question is under what conditions it is perceptible). A thought experiment: wet clothes in a box for a few hours, with or without a dry towel. Of course in the second case the clothes end up with less moisture in them than in the first, because some has gone into the towel. The same happens in the dryer. – phoog Jul 16 '22 at 08:04